


Frostbite

by vaguenotion



Series: Frostbite [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Pre-Trespasser, Slow-ish burn, Sort of a murder mystery, mild references to homophobia, post-inquisition meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 15:09:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18284795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguenotion/pseuds/vaguenotion
Summary: A sizable fist fight in the great hall at Skyhold sets off a chain of mysterious events that send the Inquisitor into high alert. With a tournament in the courtyard and an intruder in the shadows, Lavellan is starting to feel like he's back in the middle of the war they'd just won.Resolution, it seems, has followed him home from the Frostback Basin.





	Frostbite

**Author's Note:**

> I would recommend reading the first part of this two-part series, Exposure. It provides a fair amount of context for the climax of this fic. 
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/13992381

**_Part Two: Frostbite_ **

Lavellan keeps his eyes fixed on the tapestry before him. He takes a long, deliberate sip of tea from his mug. In the background, chaos.

He thinks he hears Sera’s unhinged laughter over the din of shouting and knocking about, but he remains facing forward, busying himself with a woven scene depicting the hero of Ferelden. Tries to think about the stitchwork, the embroidery, the composition. He doesn’t care about any of those things, but the drive to be petty is stronger than the need to get involved on his one day off.

Three majors changes were put into effect at Skyhold following the initial aftermath of Corypheus’s defeat.

The first was to establish teams and objectives, a near-total organizational overhaul spearheaded by Josephine that was designed to address the Inquisition’s new goals, of which there were many. The world was brimming with refugees, political rivals, recently-freed mages, what was left of the templars and grey wardens--the list went on and on, and the Inquisition had an iron in every fire.

The second was a dedicated team of engineers and architects who were tasked with the full restoration of Skyhold--during the conflict that brought them to the mountain keep, time and resources were primarily thrown at the apocalypse aversion effort, rather than state of the art facilities and training grounds. Restoring a mage tower, a garden, and a rudimentary infirmary were the most they could manage. Now, with political and financial support--and no hole in the sky--they could invest in all the nooks and crannies of their mountain fortress.

And the third change was that Thursdays were Inquisitor Lavellan’s day off. Without exception.

There was an unholy amount of things yet to be done, even without an undead magister stalking about in the shadows. But certainly none of those things were so time-sensitive as to demand around-the-clock attention from the Inquisitor, and he’d argued as much to his advisers when things had well and truly begun to settle.

Well. Argued implied that he’d asked permission; he had told them directly. Sometimes one has to treat oneself. 

Regardless, when Lavellan had retired the night before, he had drifted into a deep and easy sleep knowing that no one would be disturbing him the following morning. Nothing made for an effortless rest quite like knowing it would end on his terms. 

So the hollar that woke him was unwelcome, to say the least. 

He didn’t hear it at first. How could he? Not only was the door to his tower at the bottom of the staircase, but Lavellan did not sleep in the four-post bed that stood so regally across from the fireplace. That bed was for show, on the insistence of both Josephine and Vivienne, and was only really used for the rare night when he was too bone-tired to make it any further, and… well, sex. Because it was easier to drop down onto cold, unfamiliar sheets in a fit of lust than it was to climb to where he actually slept. 

Which was in the loft, above the room. He could remember those first few nights in Skyhold, after the tower had been cleaned and prepared for him. The staggeringly high ceilings and far-off walls made the place feel haunted when he was left alone, even with a fire roaring. It hadn’t helped that he was still recovering from Haven. His injuries had been put on hold, and he’d had to outpace both Corypheus and the hypothermia he had only just beaten before they had to be on the retreat. He should have slept fine given how exhausted he really was, but on the third night of restless paranoia, he gave up. He pulled blankets and pillows up the ladder to the open loft above, and he made himself a nest. 

(He managed to keep this nest a secret for exactly four days before someone came in to stoke an early-morning fire and thought he’d been spirited away in the dead of night. After that, he had to make sure everyone on staff knew where he was.) 

The nest had evolved over the last two years. As the bedding became denser and more permanent, so too did the surroundings: books and personal letters piled up, stacks of them turned into improvised bedside tables; odds and ends that he’d collected on their many scouting missions, ranging from interesting statuettes to jewelry he’d won in card games around the fire to gifts from temporary companions; and, as always, plants. Lots of them, spilling out of pots of all shapes and sizes, bunches dried and hanging from the walls.

In short: it was the most comfortable place in Skyhold, and also a whimsical mess that Dorian constantly gave him grief for. 

All that to say that when the hollar first began, he was well and truly out of earshot. As it rose in pitch--a chorus of shouting voices, smashing about, and general upheaval--so too did it rise into the loft where he slept. Only then had it succeeded in waking him, but Lavellan simply turned into his pillows. Either it would die down, or someone would come fetch him.

Then, of course, came the thought that perhaps they were under attack, and he groaned. Might as well go make sure the world wasn’t ending again. 

He tried to assess what was going on through the sounds of distant voices as he climbed down the ladder from the loft and dressed. With all the construction going on, it was possible that it was something minor, like collapsed scaffolding and following arguments. Maybe it was the Chargers, at it again with a visiting mercenary group that had accompanied some noble.

Lavellan skipped footwear and finery, opting instead for an outfit casual enough to earn Vivienne’s quiet ire. If he was to be disrupted on his only and holy day off, he was going to do it on his own terms. Besides, his leg was still healing from his little kidnapped stint in the Frostback Basin. It was a stiff and uncomfortable chore to squat and get boots on his feet.

The second he left his private chamber, Lavellan knew they were not being attacked. The pitch and sway of voices, loud though they may be, did not carry the kind of panic that he knew from the days of Corypheus. So whatever had drawn him from his bed was something he could probably stay out of.

He tried not to be annoyed. A full, uninterrupted day off was not a luxury he could always afford, no matter how resolute he was about not being bothered. Often around noon, he was always drawn into one minor crisis or another.

And he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious.

He made his way steadily and calmly down to the main hall, the limp still obvious, but less so with each passing day. He was greeted at the bottom of the stairs by a scene that took him a moment to process.

An intricate pulley system had been erected three days prior to lift workers and lumber into the rafters, where they were working to replace the roof with fresher more durable material. It created a lot of clutter overhead, a lot of hazard, and a lot of irritating squeaking noises as rope and metal pulleys creaked about.

It was also, apparently, prone to snapping ropes, because a lift had clearly upended it’s load of wood down onto the floor of the great hall from very high above.

Lavellan had, somehow, not heard the sound of wood crashing to the floor, but there were enough mages in the area that perhaps they had caught it with magic before it could land. That did not, however, prevent the scene he was now looking at.

There were at least three fist fights going on, food being thrown back and forth from the long table where breakfast was often served, and absolutely the Chargers were involved. Lavellan stood quietly, far enough from the chaos to not have been noticed or dragged into it yet.

“Good morning,” Dorian greeted, in a tone that suggested it wasn’t a very good morning at all. He appeared from around a statue with a steaming mug of tea. “Thought you’d be down soon.”

“Never a dull moment,” Lavellan replied, accepting the offered mug and drawing it up under his nose to test the temperature. He watched the conflict for a moment over the rim of the mug before pivoting around and deliberately turning his focus on a massive hanging tapestry.

Which is where he finds himself still, Dorian at his side. The two of them consider the depicted scene, pointedly ignoring the brawl several yards away. 

“This is so inaccurately dramatized,” Dorian muses. “I’ve seen my fair share of epic battles and I’ve never seen hair kept in such neat order in the heat of things.” 

“Or that many beams of sunlight bursting through the clouds,” Lavellan agrees, taking another sip. Behind them, Cullen’s voice rises over the din of arguing, demanding order. The sound halves, and nearly quiets to calm before the audible _pop_ of a suckerpunch punctuates the air, and the fight starts right back up. 

“Herald,” Josephine blurts by way of greeting, “can you not interrupt?” 

She is hurrying over to them, a quill still pinched between her fingers. She looks more frustrated than panicked, and something in the set of her shoulders tells Lavellan that she’s reluctant to ask for his aid, but if there is one person on the entire mountain who could stop a brawl with a single word, it is Lavellan. 

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Dorian answers for him, “but isn’t it the Inquisitor’s day off?” 

Lavellan grins into his mug as he takes another sip. 

“I know, and I apologize,” Josephine says, coming to a stop beside them and glancing with only slight disdain at the tapestry they’ve chosen to focus on. “It is the contractors I hired from Denerim to repair the roof. They take great exception to their Orlesian coworkers. I fear it has been building to this for the last several weeks.” 

“Southerners,” Dorian replies, somewhere between exasperation and fondness. “Always so quick to throw a punch. Though, I suppose if we solved things like this in Tevinter, a lot of shoulders would carry less tension.”

“How about a little competition,” Lavellan interrupts, finally peeling his eyes from the tapestry. “If they want to fight so badly, they can have at it in the training ring. Offer a prize, gather a crowd.”

Josephine’s eyebrow quirks. “Bolster morale and release tension at the same time,” she muses. “Interesting. Though if they take it too seriously, one side losing the competition would surely create more conflict.” 

“Strongest man in Skyhold? Less based on nationality,” Dorian suggests. 

“Most clever fighter in Skyhold,” Lavellan amends, taking another sip of tea. 

“We have gold in our coffers for a prize,” Josephine says. 

“If it means I don’t have to mediate conflict between two groups of equally frustrating people,” Lavellan concludes, “I will even offer up a bottle from my private collection.” 

The three of them grin at one another. Behind them, an expensive-sounding smash cuts over the din of voices, and Josephine rolls her eyes back and groans. 

- 

The courtyard is finally free of that wretched swamp, and Lavellan is still proud of it three months after they drained the damned thing. 

If it were warmer--if they were not nestled high in the Frostbacks--he wouldn’t have minded it. In fact, it was very nearly a certifiable pond, and sometimes the odd flock of ducks would settle in it to rest for a day or two, which was good for them and good for the head cook, who delighted in a change of menu.

But Lavellan prefers to remain barefoot, and having a freezing cold marsh in the middle of the upper courtyard was never something he enjoyed. Besides, now that the muck is gone, they have the opportunity to host events, like a giant organized test of strength.

The turn out is impressive. Nearly half of Skyhold is in attendance, with the threat of more joining should the tournament prove to be entertaining. After the brawl the day before--something that has been described as both “legendary” and “hugely inconvenient”--everyone is rearing for some kind of resolution. 

A simple fence was erected the night prior to section off the fighting ring, and stands were built just as fast. A single platform was positioned at one end of the ring for the judges to sit on and watch the fights. How Josephine managed to prepare such a thing in such a short window is beyond him, but Lavellan had long ago stopped questioning how she accomplished anything. 

He finds a seat next to Cullen on the judge’s platform and slouches into a comfortable position almost immediately, pointedly ignoring the soft _tsk_ from Cassandra on his other side. She, of all people, seems to still hold onto the notion that he is inherently more regal than he is, despite all the evidence she has to the contrary.  

As the anticipation in the audience becomes more and more palpable, Lavellan scans the growing crowd with something like worry in his gut. So many tense and uncertain times saw a gathering this large, everyone sick with dread for what was to come. Those memories were so saturated that even now, gathering for something so jovial, Lavellan can feel the prickling onset of anxiety across the back of his neck. 

But the faces gathered are excited, happy, laughing. Arms crossed as they share their thoughts about who will likely win, and who will get themselves beat into the mud. Coins changing hands, laughter and shoving and stomping about. There’s a weight that no longer rests on their shoulders, the way it did when the sky was open and an ancient magister was threatening to shred the very fabric of the world. 

Among the crowd, there is one point of stillness. A man with a hood drawn up, face obscured, stands almost directly across the ring from where Lavellan sits on the platform. He is motionless where the crowd around him wriths. With the hood up, and from the distance he is at, Lavellan cannot be sure what the individual is looking at, but he has the distinct sense that it is him. Hairs rise on the back of his neck--instinct, maybe, but surely one born from conditioning. He has trouble not seeing assassins where there are only shadows, hearing demons where there are only branches scraping against the walls. He blinks, and the hooded figure is gone from his sight. 

And then Cullen rises and lifts his arms into the air, and a great cheer goes up, echoing off the high walls around them. Lavellan adjusts how he is sitting and tries to shake it off. 

“Inquisition,” Cullen calls, his voice booming, commanding. He introduces the tournament, underlines the reason for it, the prize, all that nonsense. He introduces Cassandra and Lavellan as the other two judges and the crowd goes wild again. The chance to prove their strength amongst their peers is one thing--the opportunity to do it before the Herald of Andraste is quite another. 

As Cullen speaks, a few soldiers lead the first two contenders over the fence. There’s booing and jeering from all around the ring, hollering to _kick his ass,_ reminders of who has money on who. Applause. The opponents are both imposing: a woman with arms thick as trees, and a man who has height on his side. They circle each other at a distance, sizing one another up, trying to intimidate each other. A soldier stands between them, gesturing for them to stand back. 

Cullen sits back down, and the eyes that aren’t hungrily fixed on the two contenders swivel toward Lavellan. The soldier in the middle of the ring watches him closely for the signal.

Beside him, Cassandra shifts. “She will win,” she says quietly. “Lower center of gravity.”

“Five gold for lower gravity,” Lavellan agrees. On his right, Cullen scoffs.

 “I’ll take that bet. He’ll make short work of her.”

 Lavellan grins, lifts a few fingers, and the fight begins.

 -

 The sun is drifting past it’s zenith and the mountain air has warmed up from the crisp cool of that morning. Cullen’s precise and deliberate hold on the reigns of order have kept things from spiraling to chaos, but the divide between the Fereldan and Orlesian contractors has become visibly obvious. They seem to have chosen opposite sides of the ring to stand on, however intentionally it may have been, and are reacting to the fights with comical overzealousness.

Cassandra, for her part, has become awfully invested in the fate of this tournament. On several occasions she has jolted forward in barely-stifled reaction, or slammed a fist on the arm of her chair, or leaned back with a smug and satisfied grin on her face. She is leaning forward now, chin in her hand and elbow on her knee as she watches two women grapple in the ring.

 Cullen, on the other hand, is leaning away from the action to listen to an agent who is whispering something in his ear. Lavellan’s attention is entirely on the murmuring, but even his sharp ears can’t make out the message over the din of the crowd.

After a few moments, the commander nods curtly and leans toward Lavellan, who meets him halfway between their chairs without removing his eyes from the fight.

“There’s been an incident in the dungeons,” the commander reports. “Leliana’s people are all over it, but have requested your aid.”

Lavellan nods, once, his eyes tracking the fight but not really seeing it. Something in his gut hardens, walls slamming up, defenses readying. A surge of mana rushes to his fingertips, repressed before little sparks can shock the arm of his chair. He sets his jaw.

Exiting discretely is easier than he anticipates. Too many people have their attention locked on the fight as one fighter hauls the other over her shoulder and throws her halfway across the ring. The people go wild, and in the next moment, the Inquisitor’s seat is empty. He stalks through the loosely-knit crowd behind stage, people parting for him if they happen to see him coming, and follows the two agents who came to fetch him.

On the edge of the courtyard, several short steps lead down to the door to the dungeons. It’s a heavy oak thing, the wood having frozen and thawed so many times over it’s long life that it appears petrified. There are guards standing outside of it, a few of Leliana’s agents with their bows at the ready. Lavellan breezes past them with the murderous air of someone who has saved the world and doesn’t want to have to do it again. 

Down the two long staircases, his feet are silent and swift on the steps despite the stiffness of his thigh and the resulting limp. The sounds of the boisterous crowd vanish behind him as he descends, fainter and fainter until it is difficult to tell where the white noise of cheering ends and the natural echo of dungeon walls begins.

An ‘incident’, Cullen had said. His wording was discreet enough to be appropriate for the environment they were in, but vague enough to be frustratingly unhelpful. Lavellan’s frown sets deeper on his face as he takes the last few steps into the well-lit chamber beneath Skyhold.

Leliana is standing with her back to him when he enters the room. She is studying a concerning scene with clinical eyes.

The entire dungeon is in normal order, except for a blast of ice that has frozen an Inquisition soldier solid against one of the support pillars. The poor bastard’s face is partially obscured by opaque ice, but it’s clear that he was caught completely unaware by the attack.

“Wonderful,” Lavellan deadpans as he enters, unable to stop himself. Leliana turns at the sound of his voice and squares her shoulders, her expression reflecting his sentiment.

“It would appear we have an intruder,” she says.

“Would it?”

She nods toward the old wooden door that leads to the second more destroyed part of the dungeon. It has been propped open, and a cold mountain wind is blowing through. Lavellan follows Leliana past the frozen soldier and through the door.

A few cells are still functioning out here, but it’s an unusually cruel thing to make someone spend the night in a veritable ice chest, so they’re rarely used. The other features in this part of the dungeon are the vanished floor, the sharp drop to death, and the waterfall that plummets down from a wellspring beneath the mountain.

Lavellan leans over the edge, peering down into the freezing mist below. Beside him, Leliana shares a few commands with an agent, who vanishes back into the main dungeon.

“We believe whoever it is accessed Skyhold this way. My agents report no suspicious activity along the walls and surrounding area, and Cullen’s troops provided a ledger of every entry into the keep for the last month. Nothing out of the usual.”

Lavellan glances up from the steep drop with a raised eyebrow. “You believe someone swam up?”

Leliana does not acknowledge his attempt at a joke. “Why else would someone attack a single soldier down here? There is nothing of value, no prisoners being held. Perhaps that poor soul was simply an obstacle to the intruder’s entrance into Skyhold.”

“Or it could be internal conflict,” Lavellan reasons. “There’s been no shortage of tension between the contractors.”

“Perhaps.” Leliana tucks her hands behind her back and examines the cliff walls on either side of the waterfall with a critical frown. “But that is just it. The fight that took place in the great hall yesterday--it began under curious circumstances. I’ve had my people look into how the pulley system collapsed, as both contractor groups blamed the other for what happened. The rope was not frayed from age or cut from a knife--it appeared to have been made brittle from ice.”

She gives him a look that says something like ‘ _if you know what I mean,’_ or maybe _‘a sleeping child could follow my line of logic’._ Lavellan blinks at her a moment, face blank, before it clicks.

“You think it was a mage,” he ventures. “Who froze the ropes.”

“And froze the soldier that discovered their entrance,” Leliana concludes.

“Why? What’s the benefit of causing all that chaos in the great hall?”

Leliana’s sharp eyes flashed momentarily sharper. “It has distracted all of us, has it not? Drawn our resources away from their usual positions. In containing the fighting, we have looked away from more discreet areas of vulnerability. Created openings for someone to move unnoticed.” 

A quiet settles between them as they both considered the information. Lavellan glances once again down at the cliffs below. There are spots of ice here and there up the length of the wall, but it’s impossible to tell if they are there naturally because of the waterfall, or the result of a mage creating footholds.

“When was this soldier discovered,” Lavellan asks, turning his attention back toward the main chamber of the dungeon. Leliana is quiet for only a moment longer, frowning at those same ice spots on the cliff wall, before turning to follow his line of sight.

“About an hour ago. He was stationed here until last night. Some of his fellow soldiers have reported that he liked to come down here to sleep, which may be why no one questioned his absence until this morning when he was not in his bed in the barracks.”

“Shit,” Lavellan mutters, turning to pace back into the main room. “Have you sent for some mages to get him out?”

“Yes--they’re on standby. I wanted you to be take a look at it first.”

A twinge of sadness shines through the desensitized haze that has come to surround him. Lavellan looks upon the frozen soldier and tries to hold onto that sadness, tries to feel it as deeply as he once did. It bothers him more that he doesn’t mourn than it does that a man is dead in front of him.

Funny, how much the Inquisition has changed him.

“Have them remove him carefully. We’ll have to arrange a pyre, but if we have an intruder, we don’t want to let on that we know too soon.”

Leliana nods, once, and sets to work. Before she goes, she rests her hand briefly on his shoulder, and he pulls his eyes from the frozen soldier. Her face is difficult to read--when is it not?--but her intention is immediately apparent. _I’m sorry, my friend._

She turns away when he acknowledges the gesture with a nod. For a moment he stands there, eyes tracking slowly over the stone of the dungeon for some hint of what happened, of who came through. Nothing stands out. 

Far above at the top of the staircase, the door to the dungeons is opened, and the sounds of cheering echo faintly down to him. He stands silently, alone with the body, and takes a slow, deep breath.

-

Back in the cool mountain air of the courtyard, the grass that has been in shadow all morning is still wet with dew, and soaks Lavellan’s boots as he makes his way back to the judge’s stand. He is distracted, re-examining memories from the past few days to try and find some thread of inconsistency.

The reality is that he is so often busy with minute things that he doesn’t have a good eye on Skyhold anymore. He had been so vigilant in the days of the breach, doing a frankly neurotic number of rounds along the ramparts and through the back corners, trying to chase shadows out of their hiding spots. Now, with an empire in his hands, he hardly has the time. Maybe taking a day off is frivolous.

No, he needs the day off. Creators, does he need a day off. If he ever has any hope of leaving and returning to his family, he has to keep himself alive until the Inquisition can fend for itself.

The tournament has carried on as if he never left. Only Cassandra and Cullen give him sideways looks, lingering and suspicious. He makes a gesture that somehow conveys ‘Leliana is on it’, and they both reluctantly turn their eyes back to the match, but the tension remains in the set of their shoulders. 

A man with an especially impressive beard is currently parading around the ring in victory while his opponent struggles to pick himself back up. The crowd is going wild, hollering and throwing fists in the air to egg the competitors on. It’s no longer so obvious where the Orlesian contractors end and the Fereldan ones begin. Almost sightlessly, Lavellan’s eyes track the crowd. He is lost in thought. A dead soldier, an intruder, possibly a mage. To what end? The Venatori are scattered but not eradicated--could it be one of them? Or the strange chalk markings that Leliana’s people dead-ended on, months ago--something that he’s been thinking on for a while. Could that be a lead? Maybe Briala’s people? 

Then, an image returns to him. A point of stillness in the crowd, a hooded figure. He frowns. Whoever that had been, surely it was just a random spectator.

But the longer he thinks on it, the more sure he is that it is connected, and he learned long ago to trust his instincts. Paranoia sets in for a reason.

How long had it been since he’d seen that figure? Three hours, at least. Lavellan can see no hoods in the crowd now, nothing that strikes him as out of place. And what could be more suspicious than a cloaked figure in the middle of the Inquisition?

“Inquisitor.”

Cullen’s voice is jarring right beside his ear, and he jolts, blinking owlishly at the commander. The man winces, some unspoken and brief flash of apology on his face, before glancing into the crowd, trying to follow Lavellan’s gaze. “Should we call off the tournament?” 

It takes a moment for Lavellan to process the suggestion for what it is. When it clicks--when he is finally able to switch subjects--he shakes his head. “What? No. Too much momentum--if we try to end it now, it’ll devolve into another brawl.”

Cullen’s face is difficult to read. He seems to want to say something, his gaze more calculating than Lavellan is comfortable with.

“Perhaps,” Cassandra cuts in, leaning over the arm of her chair to hear their hushed conversation, “the Commander can leave to attend the situation?”

Before Lavellan can respond, Cullen waves his hand to dismiss the notion. “I don’t believe that’s necessary. I trust Leliana’s people, and my own. If we have to keep up appearances, it’s best I am here.”

Cassandra frowns, a touch of confusion in the crease between her brow. She hasn’t been informed of the dead soldier yet, the ice, the intruder. Cullen must know the gist of it, reported to him by Leliana’s spy before Lavellan was lead to the dungeons. In stride, Cassandra turns her piercing gaze on Lavellan, who sits uncomfortably between two scrutinizing looks.

“Perhaps, then, the Inquisitor can take his leave,” Cassandra ventures, before tacking on a quick “If you would like.”

“It would give you an opportunity to look into things yourself,” Cullen agrees. “This contest is no longer about proving who is best--it’s just a chance for them to all let off steam. They didn’t notice you being gone before.”

“Make a man feel special,” he mutters, but it does not throw off their attention.

The subtext, Lavellan knows, is a familiar one. His tendency to work himself into a fever in order to get things done has left his inner circle with the wary and near-patronizing habit of trying to give him breathing room, excuses to not push himself so hard. Even now, with the world saved from the threat of Corypheus, they still seem keen on offering him respite when they feel they can.

Usually, Lavellan ignores it with varying degrees of stubborness. This time, with the roar of a crowd distracting him and a distinct lack of interest in the outcome of this glorified donnybrook, he thinks they might be right. 

He points an authoritarian finger at Cassandra, and then at Cullen. “This isn’t a break,” he says.

They both grin. “No,” Cullen says, “it’s for very official Inquisition business.”

“We have a situation,” Lavellan reminds them sternly.

“So I hear,” Cassandra agrees.

“And I’m very good at my job,” Lavellan asserts.

“Anyone who doubts that is a fool,” Cullen says, “but you’d best slip out of here before things start to settle down.”

He squints at them both, more for show than actual concern, before his face breaks into a grin to match theirs. “Fine. But if something happens, I’m fetching you both.”

“Even if it means this tournament will ‘devolve into another brawl’?”

“Even so. It’s a brawl anyway, just with people taking turns.”

“Unfair!” Cassandra suddenly bellows, her attention stolen right back to the fight. “Referee! That was a cheap shot!”

Lavellan and Cullen share one final grin, before the Inquisitor takes his leave.

- 

The view from the ramparts, familiar though it is, has not stopped impressing him. To look out at the mountains that surround them is both empowering and humbling: he is a singular force to be reckoned with, the leader of an empire, but they’re all so temporary compared to the mountain slopes and glaciers above. He thinks about the frozen soldier--a man who had survived the war against the red templars, the Venatori, Corypheus. Had lived through it all, only to be caught off guard by a blast of ice while he was dawdling in an unoccupied part of the keep.

There and gone in a flash. Temporary.

Finally, a sense of sadness rises in his chest, and he is relieved to feel it. He is pondering impermanance and death as his feet carry him along, the old stones of the keep growing warm in the sun. He slows to a stop and stands there, very much alive, and impulsively bends to remove his shoes.

His leg pulls, and he winces. He sighs. _This damned wound can’t heal fast enough._

A supply chest is positioned against the wall. He sits down and stretches out his bad leg, bending to get at the laces of his boots. He can still hear the tournament brewing, far more cheerful now as it approaches some kind of resolution. When he is barefoot once again--thank goodness--he continues along his path.

There isn’t anything of note. He isn’t sure what he’s looking for. It’s not as if a hooded man is going to step out in front of him and reveal himself to be an intruder. (Assassins? Uncreative but always possible.) Eventually he passes through Cullen’s study, where two soldiers snap to attention as he enters, and across the walkway into the rotunda in the main hold. 

Before he can think about the absence that Solas has left, he is hailed.

“Thank the Maker--Amatus, I was just talking about you,” Dorian calls, his voice echoing down from above. “You said something rather clever the other day that will help illustrate my point--”

“You don’t _have_ a point,” Varric replies, his disembodied voice drifting down as well. Lavellan sighs and crosses the room under the ever-watchful gaze of Solas’s murals and Leliana’s ravens. He takes the stairs two at a time until he is in view of the top, and then slows so as not to seem in a hurry. (And not because his leg begins to protest. Definitely not.)

“The _point,_ ” Dorian is saying, “is that the Hero of Fereldan had the choice of death or Morrigan, and while I cannot fault the man’s drive for survival, that is a terrible choice to have to make.”

“You just don’t like Morrigan,” Varric laughs. “You’d opt to have a child with her too if it meant you could live to curl that mustache another day.”

“I’m not denying that,” Dorian says. “But _Morrigan._ Amatus, what was the thing you said the other day about her?” 

The two men are lounging in Dorian’s alcove, a bottle of something strong and foul-smelling open between them. Why they are together--or how they got on the subject in the first place--is not immediately apparent, but they both seem to be enjoying the distance between them and the tournament outside. 

“I’d rather not say,” Lavellan answers neutrally, eyes scanning the balcony that rings the rotunda. There are fewer people up here than usual. Likely, they are drinking and hollering at violence in the courtyard.

“She’s not here anymore,” Varric pushes, curiosity and malt liquor getting the better of him. “Besides, you’re a much scarier mage than she is.”

“I resent that.”

“You shouldn’t,” Dorian insists. “It’s one of your many attractive qualities.”

Something uncoils in Lavellan’s gut, just a bit. Relaxes. The ease with which his companions joke and chat is familiar and safe, and he feels a pull to settle down, drink, and joke with them. Pretend that there isn’t an intruder, no hooded Ventaroi assassin mage spy sent by unknown peoples from across the great ocean to do… _something._

“And anyway,” Varric is carrying on, “your dislike of her is obvious. 

“She’s a patronizing bog witch who desperately wishes herself to be both more important and more elven than she is,” Lavellan answers, quoting himself verbatim from the day before. 

“There! You see?” Dorian hoists his glass, simultaneously toasting the character assessment and offering his lover a drink, but before he can get too carried away with his satisfaction, his smile falls a bit. “Is everything alright?” 

Lavellan is still scanning the library, lost in thought. He blinks and looks back at his companions, and hurries to bury the lapse in focus. “And anyway,” he says, “didn’t the Hero of Fereldan have a relationship with that Antivan Crow?”

Varric lowers his cup and hurries to swallow his mouthful of liquor so that he can reply before Dorian. “Did he, though? Or is that just the version you prefer? So hard to know with that damned story.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Dalish elves falling madly in love with handsome and cunning men from foreign lands,” Dorian insists, but there’s a slight emptiness to his tone, distracted by his concern for his lover’s distant expression. “Certainly those beautiful elves would tell their lovers if something was bothering them?”

“Subtle,” Varric mutters into his cup. Lavellan sighs and looks toward them both with the face of someone who is more annoyed than worried. It’s not entirely genuine, but he wants to try to meet their joyful mood half way.

“We have a potential intruder. Leliana’s people are on it, but it’s spoiled a perfectly good tournament for me.” 

He watches as the two men before him react. Their expressions seem to be some middle point between mild alarm and familiar annoyance. They both roll their eyes. 

“Well, that explains the distant look on your face. Brooding only gives you wrinkles, my love.” Dorian reaches out a hand, and Lavellan crosses the small distance between them and takes it. Dorian pulls him immediately forward, and rather than stumble and fall awkwardly across the chair, Lavellan sits on his knee.

“I happen to think crow’s feet are quite handsome,” he mutters. 

Varric laughs. “Well, good news about the man you’re with--”

“Mind yourself, dwarf, I am a very accomplished murderer,” Dorian says, so quickly that it makes Lavellan laugh. “With supple and _youthful_ skin, I’ll have you know.” 

A quiet settles between them. Lavellan sighs and slumps against Dorian’s broad chest, letting his head lull onto his shoulder. “We were doing so well,” he groans, allowing himself a moment to complain. “Not a single bit of nonsense in weeks.”

“Hey now,” Varric says, “we wouldn’t want to get boring. So what’s the situation?”

He tells them. The soldier’s report about the stranger in the main hall, just before the scaffolding fell. The hooded figure in the crowd. The frozen soldier in the dungeons. But no clear motive yet, no organization to point to. Just guesswork, and a dead man who they will have to delay a funeral pyre for in order to buy a few precious hours of stealth work.

When he is finished updating them with what little he knows, Varric’s eyes are shining with possibilities. He doesn’t need to speak for them to know that he is imagining plot twists, possible outcomes that could happen if he were the one writing the tale. 

“Poor bastard,” Dorian says, the arm that is wrapped around Lavellan’s lower back tightening just a bit. “To be killed in such an uncreative way.”

“You’d rather I’d have walked in on something more horrific?”

Dorian pauses to take a sip of his drink before replying. “No, but there’s no style in ice magic. It’s the indignity of it.” 

There was a time when Lavellan would have scolded him for being so callus about a man’s death. Now, he just raises an eyebrow. “Don’t let Vivienne here you say that.”

“She’s the only exception. And what now?” The Tevinter sets his cup down on the small table between him and Varric and plants his open palm on Lavellan’s thigh, warming the tender spot where the axe had struck him in the Frostback Basin. “Rally the troops? Close the gates? Search every man, woman, and child for anything suspicious?” 

“Perhaps I should just sit on that damned throne and wait for the bastard to come to me,” Lavellan says, his tone miserable. “Save everyone the trouble of trying to track them down.”

“Sounds dreadfully boring,” Dorian sighs.

“Is there any harm in just waiting?” Varric is glancing up toward where Leliana’s ravens are cooing and cawing. “Let someone else do the groundwork for a change?” 

Lavellan sighs. “No, if anyone should be involved, it should be m--”

“A break sounds like a wonderful idea,” Dorian interrupts. “In fact, I insist you relax. You didn’t get to enjoy your day off yesterday, and nothing can be done yet without more information anyway. Trust the process, and all that.”

Lavellan scowls at him. “That’s the most irresponsible line of logic I’ve ever--”

Promptly, Dorian scoops his arm beneath Lavellan’s knees and stands, hoisting him up with him. It’s not the most graceful lift, but it doesn’t involve any risky stumbling. Lavellan’s arms go flying around Dorian’s neck for support anyway. 

“Dorian! Put me down. I hate being carried, and I do _not_ need a break.”

“What do you think,” Dorian asks, ignoring Lavellan. He turns to face Varric and holds out his lover like he’s presenting a piece of art. “Does this man need to take a break?” 

“Looks like a man who could use a break,” Varric agrees. 

“Damn you both, I’m fine, put me _down!_ ” 

Dorian obliges, and Lavellan’s bare feet find the rug that lines the alcove floor. He smooths his clothing out and scowls at his lover for lifting him in the first place. 

“I told,” he begins, and then stops to shove at Dorian’s chest when the man won’t stop laughing, “I told them I wasn’t coming up here for a nap, and I meant it.” 

“I have no intention of letting you sleep,” Dorian assures him, and Lavellan lifts a finger to continue arguing only to have Dorian take his hand and guide the finger to his lips. As he slips it into his mouth, Varric promptly rises from his chair. 

“Well, you two have fun. Try not to get assassinated by any hooded figures. I’ll go help Leliana out. Thanks for the drink, Sparkles.” 

He makes his leave, not bothering to slow when Lavellan tries to protest. Abruptly, they are alone in the alcove, and Dorian smiles at him, his grip on Lavellan’s hand becoming more gentle. 

Despite himself, Lavellan’s shoulders relax some, and he sighs. “I’m meant to meet with Leliana soon in the war room.” 

“What’s soon?” 

“A half hour.”

Dorian steps closer, guiding Lavellan into his arms, against his chest. “Mhm,” he agrees, leaning down and placing a kiss just beside Lavellan’s mouth, slow and teasing.

“Possibly forty… forty-five minutes,” Lavallen amends, his tone reasonable.

“Mm,” Dorian agrees, kissing again on Lavellan’s cheek and slowly, gently moving along to the corner of his jaw beneath his ear. Lavellan unconsciously tilts his head to allow it.

“An hour at most,” he relents, and he can feel Dorian smile against his skin by the way his mustache tickles at him. “But this is a wildly irresponsible use of my time.”

“‘Irresponsible’ is the idea,” Dorian mutters, his breath hot against flushed skin.

“There’s a stranger with unknown intentions in my keep.” 

“The scoundrel.”

“He’s killed a man.”

“I’ll protect you.” 

Dorian is holding him so close, his arms strong and solid around him, and it becomes more and more difficult to justify not stealing away for just a quick moment. What can he do now, anyway? They don’t have any leads, and he isn’t a rogue, capable of sneaking about in the shadows, or a hunter, following invisible tracks to mystery invaders. 

“You owe me,” Lavellan tries, stubbornly. 

“Allow me to make it up to you immediately,” Dorian replies. 

Lavellan sighs. 

Dorian slowly begins to walk the two of them in the vague direction of the tower, mid-embrace. 

They both let themselves get distracted. 

- 

The four-post bed in his chamber is well-kept, untouched for the last week while he and Dorian found it in themselves to climb the ladder to his little nest of blankets on the loft. They are not locked in a heated embrace--they are too familiar with their intimacy to feel that kind of urgency, at least not now. They had eased onto the fainting couch when they reached the top of the stairs, knocking books and letters off onto the carpet below. Dorian on his back, Lavellan draped on top of him, lips locked. It was easy, and familiar, and a welcome distraction from the paranoia of that morning.

At some point, Dorian had been struck by the idea that perhaps the intruder was in the tower. An idea that he found surprisingly funny, and that Lavellan found immediately distressing.

“A lucky assassin indeed, to witness such a thing as us,” Dorian had laughed, and when Lavellan had rolled off of him and stood (an unsubtle means of punishment) Dorian had groaned and pouted. 

Lavellan had crossed to the bed and flopped onto it bonelessly, groaning into the smooth blankets, and that is where he is now, pointedly ignoring Dorian’s attempts at consoling him. 

“Look,” his lover says, “I’ll hunt about, and if I find any hooded villains, I’ll give you a shout.”

“You’re think you’re so funny,” Lavellan mumbles into the bedspread.

“My darling, I am.”

Despite his levity, Dorian begins to circle the room, checking in doors and behind large objects that are hide-behind-able. He seems genuine in his search, and Lavellan realizes that the man is covering his own concern with humor. He even goes so far as to climb the ladder to the loft. 

“Nothing up here but this horrid little nest of your’s, Amatus,” he calls down. Lavellan sighs, rubbing his face against the blankets in--annoyance? Relief?

“Come down here and distract me,” he calls back, rolling his head to the side to look out over the foot of the bed at his room. Dorian had cast a fire into the fireplace before they had collapsed onto the couch, and it danced hypnotically in the hearth. 

“I only have to be asked once,” Dorian replies. Based on the throw of his voice, he’s angling down the ladder. “As a matter of fact, I have a little something that will make this especially irresponsible. Maevis described it as ‘feeling like fire in the most superb way’. No time like the present to try _that_ out.”

Lavellan doesn’t bother to move, just looks around the room and listens to boots on wooden rungs growing closer. “And where is this special thing?”

“My chambers,” his lover answers, crossing the room and leaning over the bed, over Lavellan.

“Your cha- _Dorian_.”

“There’s plenty of time.” Dorian leans down and presses a kiss to Lavellan’s cheek, slow and deliberate. “Besides, you’ll be happy I did. You won’t even remember I stepped out to grab it.”

“I’d better forget,” Lavellan warns, loving and exhausted. He rolls over and flops onto his back, feeling the time limit as Dorian heads for the stairs. “Don’t dawdle.” 

“With the image of you on your back fresh in my head? How could I. Back in a flash, Amatus.” 

“Drag your feet at your own peril, Vhenan.” 

And then, in what feels like an instant, he is alone. The quiet of his chambers envelopes him, both a relief from the morning’s chaos and an eerie reminder that his fortress is not secure. Anxiety is buzzing just outside of the small bubble of quiet. His brief time with Dorian had quieted it, but alone, there’s nothing to distract him from worry. 

Perhaps, he thinks distantly, this is actually a good sign. In the grand scheme of things, a single intruder is nothing compared to an ancient Tevinter asshole and the fabric of their reality splitting open. Considering what he has survived, it’s a luxury to be worried about a trespasser.

In the same instant that the thought crosses his mind, he feels a faint rush of pins and needles setting in on his left side, the unmistakable tingle of a magical presence. Someone else is in the room.

He moves with a precision that surprises even him. A bolt of electricity flies off of his outstretched hand in the direction his senses picked up on, his lithe body twisting up and off the bed. The floor is cold beneath his bare feet, more so than it was only moments ago.

The room remains stubbornly empty. The lightning he cast left an arc of scorch marks along the stone wall across the room, but no one is there. Lavellan stands perfectly still, heart hammering, senses sharpening with adrenaline. He keeps his arm outstretched.

For several long, still seconds, quiet creeps back into the room. Lavellan slowly turns his eyes over the different pieces of furniture, little curls of static twisting around the fingers of his outstretched hand. The room seems to be growing colder; his breath is suddenly visible before him. That buzzing sensation of another mage is only increasing.

Yet the room reveals nothing, nothing, just familiar shadows and his own things. No movement, no noise. Only cold, and that creeping sense of company. 

Dorian had checked the room. All the spots that could be easily checked, that could logically be obscuring an intruder. Spots that could be reached without difficulty. Lavellan goes still. He lifts his eyes upward. 

The ceiling soars above his head, beautifully vaulted and full of darkness. The broad wooden beams offer nothing at first, as he slowly turns his gaze over them. Paranoid. His breath puffs out in front of him again. A shiver bolts down his spine. 

And then his eyes land on a figure in the darkness above, and several things happen at once. 

A bolt of lightening leaves his hand again, arcing bright and hot up into the rafters, casting a haunting purple-blue glow across the usually dark ceiling. The figure moves, too fast to be natural, fade-stepping across the length of the beam to avoid the attack. Bright flashes of ice splinter forth from the floor around Lavellan, one of them encasing his right foot in a painful shock of cold. 

 _Idiot_ , he thinks of himself. The creep of cold had been the careful onset of an ice mine, and he had been too focused on finding the intruder to notice. He twists, pulling at his right foot to try and free it, but the ice holds him fast, so cold it burns. 

He can hear another ice mine erupt at the bottom of the stairs, the sound of wood buckling as the entrance is sealed. No escape--no aid. 

 _Fuck this_. Lavellan drops an open palm toward the swath of ice encasing his foot and feels his palm heat up with fire magic. The dulling sensation of barrier magic spreads down his leg just as he releases the buildup, protecting his leg as the ice hisses and retreats from the fire. 

He yanks his foot free, and moves. His staff is leaning up against the wall beside the fireplace, only seconds away. He makes it two steps before a cloaked figure drops to the ground between him and his target, blocking his path.

Lavellan does not stop to reassess. He draws on the barrier he’d partially called up and surges forward with fire licking up his hands. The cloaked figure raises a staff to try and defend. It’s smaller than a usual staff, etched with glowing blue veins. Familiar somehow, yet completely alien. From the Frostbacks, Lavellan thinks. Funny, the things you notice. 

He bodily tackles the intruder and the two of them hit the floor with enough force to audibly knock the wind out of the cloaked man. Lavellan is not slowed--he grabs the intruder’s staff with both flaming palms and pins it down against the man’s throat, trapping him beneath him. Holding tight, he forces his own magic into the veins of the staff. 

It resists. The alien and unnatural pushback sends the feeling of nails on a chalkboard up Lavellan’s arms, and he grits his teeth against it. It’s like his nerves are peeling backwards, the magic in his arm being pushed in rivlets back into him as best as this staff can allow, but its runes are not well made and Lavellan is a powerful mage. In a matter of a few seconds, he wins. 

There is the sound of wood splintering, and a long crack forms down the length of the staff. Lavellan aims to break it, to split the wood into unusable pieces. Before he can manage it, the cloaked figure beneath him pulls a leg up, plants his boot against Lavellan’s chest, and shoves him off with surprising strength. 

He lands on his feet, but his right foot protests and his healing thigh cramps up, sending him stumbling onto the flagstone floor on his back. He brings his arms up to defend himself from a tackle that does not come--the intruder is scrambling to his feet, holding his split staff in--disbelief? Panic? Reassessment? Lavellan sits up, and the intruder turns the staff toward him in warning, ready to attack again. 

For a strange moment, Lavellan does not process the intention. Surely any mage would know to abandon the staff. In the next moment, however, the short and unfamiliar weapon begins to glow again with magic, and Lavellan’s stomach drops. 

“Don’t-” he starts, and immediately realizes how useless that plea would be. He throws up his arms again and draws a barrier around him as fast as possible, his heart leaping into his throat. 

The intruder casts a spell; the staff explodes. 

-

Mages, as a general rule, need a foci to channel their magic. To direct it, to clarify it, to make it useful. Not all magic requires it, and not all mages rely on it, but it is generally understood by all cultures who practice magic that a mage without a staff is the breathing, talking equivalent of fire without a hearth. Uncontrolled and unpredictable.

Because magic channels through that point of focus, it puts considerable strain on the staff, which is why any branch won’t do, as Lavellan found out when he was twelve years old and curious. In general, runes and fine craftsmanship are the imperative requirements for a functioning staff. 

Because if the staff breaks, especially mid-use, the results can be catastrophic. 

Lavellan comes around to alertness with a loud ringing in his ears, unsure which way is up or why the floor is rolling around like that. His barrier is still up and around him--he is unhurt. But the pulse of magic that just blasted through his chambers has scrambled his senses. He lifts a shaking hand up and holds it over his face, counting and recounting his fingers. The number keeps coming up different. 

He tries to sit up, makes it about a half-curl, and then collapses back down, the room set off spinning in a new and nauseating direction and at greater speed than before. He moans, thinly, and the sound seems to get stuck in his inner ears as if there is cotton trapping it in there. He closes his eyes tightly and tries to draw himself back to a sense of alertness that is not forthcoming. It feels like the ground is sliding by underneath him.

Seconds later, he realizes that it _is_ sliding by underneath him. This realization is coupled with the sense that someone has gripped the shoulders of his tunic and is pulling him along somewhere.

“Dorian,” he slurs, unsure if he’s actually verbalized it or just thought it. He can see the ceiling now above him, he’s _certain_ it’s above him, and he realizes he’s being pulled toward a wall. A bright one. Sunlight. Window?

Door. To the balcony. His senses begin to reassert themselves, slowly and stubbornly. He shifts, tries to roll to the side. Drunk--that’s what he feels like. Drunk on a wave of spirit magic that made it through his barrier because it wasn’t intended to harm him in the first place. The spell that the intruder had cast with the broken staff was not a combat spell at all.

He is set down out on the balcony, in the shade of the tower. With difficulty, he struggles onto one of his elbows, rolling onto his side. The whole balcony tilts and he stops moving, afraid that he’s somehow set the thing collapsing. The floor nearly comes up to meet his face before he realizes he’s tipping forward and catches himself. 

When no knife slips between his ribs and no magic melts at his exposed skin, Lavellan decides to take a minute to breathe, and try to center himself. Maybe it’s mutual--maybe his attacker is also in a similar state. They can pause the assassination attempt for a moment, right? 

As he breathes, he starts to feel some vague sense of alertness come back to him. He closes his eyes tight. Tries to focus just on centering his equilibrium. The balcony is solid beneath him, stones cold in the open mountain air; distantly, he can hear banging and shouting. Coming from inside. The door to his chambers. 

A hand traces his cheek, and he flinches so violently that he throws himself back off balance. In a blind rush, he manages to haul himself up and scoot backwards until his back collides with the stone wall of the balcony. 

Through swimming vision, he can see the cloaked man crouching next to where Lavellan had just been lying, one bare hand still outstretched. Now he can see that the intruder’s clothing is all furs, adorned with claws and fangs and small horns. Thick and sturdy against a Frostback winter. Avaar. 

Deep inside him, a point of stillness snags Lavellan’s reeling mind. A singular hooded figure in the crowd at the fight, watching him across all the chaos. A man, crouching over Lavellan in a rotting shack in the Basin, expression all anguish and desire. 

“Elorn,” Lavellan breathes, the picture clicking into place. He feels at once intuitive and stupid for not realizing it sooner. 

For a moment, there is no acknowledgement other than an audible intake of breath. Then, the figure lifts his hands and pushes his hood back. 

In the time since their run-in with the Hakkonites, Elorn has grown in a thick dark beard. He is broader than Lavellan remembers, and his eyes more piercing, but he still looks at Lavellan as though he is something to be feared and consumed with equal ferocity, and it is as unsettling now as it was then. 

For a moment, neither of them speak. They sit there staring at one another, equally unsure of what to do next. 

“What the _fuck_ are you doing,” Lavellan rasps, breaking the silence. The words have an empowering effect--he feels, at once, righteously angry and reinvigorated. 

Elorn remains crouched there by the door. The sounds of people trying to break through into the tower are steady, but unsuccessful.

A thousand questions crowd Lavellan’s throat. The pieces of the mystery all click into place, though he is surprised at the result nonetheless. Surprised to see this man again, in a context so intimate and personal. After a few stuttering moments of shock, one question makes its way out on the tail-end of a deep breath. 

“How is this meant to end,” he asks. He’s unsure what he means--is Elorn here to kill him? Kidnap him again? It’s too open-ended. Their brief history together is too convoluted, too unclear. Back in the Basin Elorn had seemed torn between sacrificing Lavellan and fucking him. Which motive had driven him here? 

“That,” Elorn says after a moment, “is up to you.” 

This makes Lavellan laugh. It’s a single bolt of sound, more surprise than humor. “Don’t be fucking cryptic,” he cuts back, still winded and disoriented from the wave of magic cast by the exploding staff. “You broke into my keep, killed one of my men, and have now thoroughly ruined the remainder of my day. Out with it.” 

This outburst seems to catch Elorn off guard, as if Lavellan has taken some imagined script and set it on fire. The man stares at him hard, breathing noticeably, and does not respond. Through the room behind them and down the staircase, there is another loud and muffled bang.

“Time isn’t on your side,” Lavellan says, his voice even and low. “If you intend to kill me, best get on with it.”

Elorn stands, suddenly enough to startle Lavellan, but he does not step forward. He fists his hands at his side and looks down at the Inquisitor with an intense, unreadable expression. After a beat, he reaches behind his back and unsheathes a knife.

Alarm surges through Lavellan’s entire body. He shifts, drawing his knees up to try and brace his feet against the stone floor, looking for purchase. He isn’t sure how his magic is going to respond in the state he’s in. 

But Elorn still does not move. He holds the knife out, more to display it then to prepare a strike. After a confused moment, Lavellan recognizes it.

Dagna’s knife. The one he had given to Elorn in the Basin before he vanished into the woods that night.

“Why,” Elorn asks. “Why let me live, why arm me, if you did not intend for our paths to cross again?”

Lavellan stares up at him. Static snaps off his finger tips. He says, stupidly, “What?”

“I chose you over my people. You gave me the means to survive, to come back to find you one day.”

The words don’t make sense. Lavellan racks his mind for knowledge of the Avaar, for any cultural significance that might be gleaned from giving a man a knife. “I gave you that knife because you helped me, in the end. Not so you could come to Skyhold and attack me in my own chambers.”

Elorn’s face tightens, anger and confusion and resolve all flashing across what features remain visible under the beard. “It is custom,” he begins, his words clipped, and then he squares his shoulders and begins again. “It is tradition, for the Avaar to court a bride by sneaking into their hold and stealing her away. So I...” 

For a moment, there is dead air between them. Then something like righteous fury flares up in Lavellan and he hauls himself to his feet, bracing against the wall of the balcony to keep his balance. “Do I look like a woman to you? A bride! Do you _hear_ yourself?” 

“Then be the one to end it,” Elorn snaps back, shoving the knife toward Lavellan as if offering it to him. “It should be you who kills me, as you _should have done then!_ I have nothing, no hold, no clan, no culture! I refuse to become a lowlander and I _refuse_ to go crawling back for forgiveness. If you will not have me, than you will finish what you started in the Basin!” 

Lavellan stares at him. A wind cuts across the balcony, pulling at Lavellan’s hair and Elorn’s furs. Dagna’s knife glints in the weak sun that reflects of the glacier behind Lavellan’s back. 

“So that’s it, then,” Lavellan says, his voice quieter than he intended. “Isn’t it? You think you have nothing else to lose.”

“Nothing else to--” The knife dips a fraction. “I am an exile. I spend my nights thinking of death and _you_. You should have killed me as you killed Anashe and Kiveal. An honorable death in battle! Yet you deny me that! You deny me twice now!” 

From below, another bang. This one is accompanied by a crunch of ice. Elorn chances one look over his shoulder, something hysterical in his eyes. Panic. Lavellan isn’t sure what will happen when that door bursts open and the stairwell floods with Inquisition soldiers, but he senses it won’t be anything good. 

“I’m not your bride,” he says, sharp enough to regain Elorn’s focus. “I’m a lowlander man. You didn’t know what to do with either of those things the last time and you still don’t know now.”

Elorn stares at him. Says nothing.

“I,” Lavellan begins, his voice halving in volume. He realizes, unhelpfully, that he does not want to share what he is about to share, and forces the words out anyway. “I have never been interested in pursuing women. I have tried. For my clan, for want of parenthood one day, for want of not having one more fucking thing set me apart from my loved ones. And I’ve been… I’ve been fortunate, that my clan accepted it. That I have found someone whom I can love. You… In the Basin, that is why I gave you the knife. Because you have not had that opportunity. Because your hold turned you out for it.” 

Elorn takes a half step to the side, more to displace his discomfort than anything else. He stares at Lavellan with so much emotion that it is hard to look him in the eye. 

“I’m not here for you,” Lavellan clarifies. “One act of kindness does not equate admiration. We have faced the same struggle with different outcomes. I have a man that I love, that I have chosen for myself. You cannot force my hand, and you cannot throw your life away just because you have not yet found someone of your own.” 

At the bottom of the staircase, a loud crashing sound announces the clearing of the blocked doorway. Over the clatter of armor, advancing up the steps, Dorian’s voice cuts through. 

“ _Amatus,_ ” he yells, his tone anguished with dread and made powerful with purpose.

Elorn does not look away from Lavellan. He is wasting the few precious seconds he has. Lavellan stares back, hyper-aware of the advancing help, of the knife in Elorn’s grip. 

“It’s unfair,” Elorn says. “That you have everything.”

Lavellan says nothing. The words pierce much deeper than he wants to acknowledge. He does not have time to turn it over and examine why it feels like he’s just been struck. 

He sees Dorian through the doorway. Elorn turns, and sees him too. Recognizes him from the Basin, as the man who had held Lavellan so close. Recognizes him as the man who had been wrapped in Lavellan’s arms that very afternoon. The man Lavellan has just professed to love. 

Elorn looks back at Lavellan, and this time his expression is set. He has made a decision. 

Without a word, he lunges forward, and bodily tackles Lavellan over the side of the balcony. 

- 

The thing about barriers is that they prevent damage from piercing and magic quite effectively, but are not as useful against things like impact. 

Lavellan hits the snow with enough force to make his bones creak, a harsh pain surging through his body, chasing the breath clear out of him. The world turns madly around them both as they tumble, the slope of days-old snow collapsing around them and raining down ahead of them. Their combined weight, mercifully, sinks them deep enough that they only roll a dozen meters before they have sunk deep enough to come to a standstill. 

If he wasn’t disoriented on the balcony, he is now. Lavellan does not move--does not even try. For several long moments, he has minimal sense of alertness and very little sense of self. Snow is packed in against the side of his face, stinging cold and surprisingly hard against his skin.

Just a few meters away, a cry of frustration and anguish cuts through the muffled snow. Elorn, still alive, has been thwarted yet again in his quest for honorable death. Lavellan has denied him once more.

The sympathy, if there was any to begin with, is now thoroughly dried up. 

High above, voices are shouting in a frenzy. Cullen’s voice--at least, Lavellan assumes--is calling orders. People along the ramparts are racing back and forth, shouting _There they are! The intruder is on his feet! The Inquisitor appears to be moving!_

He tries to imagine them pointing down at the baffling and unusual drama below them. The mental image is quickly followed by the image of crossbows aiming for Elorn. 

Lavellan forces himself to sit up. His entire body protests, chest tight with unnatural pain.

Elorn is scraping about in the snow for something, either unaware of Lavellan or in spite of his presence. It takes Lavellan several moments to realizing what he’s looking for: Dagna’s knife. Lavellan can see it lying only three feet from where he is sitting half-buried in the disrupted snow. 

With stiff and painful effort, Lavellan extends his arm and grabs the knife. He looks up at the balcony, and the ramparts, crowded with soldiers flying about in action. Surely they have already sent dozens of men racing to the front gates, intending to climb off the side of the bridge, through the snow and around the keep, hugging the walls of Skyhold and moving slowly avoid a sudden fall down the slopes. Or an avalanche. 

And, unsurprisingly, there are many, many arrows being drawn. 

The first few whistle through the air and splinter off of a barrier that Elorn has drawn up without Lavellan noticing. The rest sink into the snow uselessly, blown off course by the winds sweeping up the slope. Someone calls for a ceasefire, warns them that they might hit the Inquisitor. 

Elorn is breathing hard, stumbling thigh-high through the snow, sweeping his hands back and forth over the ice to try and reveal the knife. Everything is chaos around him. 

It’s too much, suddenly. Lavellan feels like he’s drunk, his body is howling with pain, he’s desperately underdressed to be lying in a heap of snow, and now he’s made to feel like some damsel in distress, which is one insult too many. 

“ _Enough_ ,” Lavellan calls, loud and clear and piercing. Elorn stops. The shouting high above halves, peters out. All eyes fall to Lavellan.

With a bracing breath, he draws himself to his feet, stumbling in the deep snow before he can find balance. Elorn’s eyes lock onto the knife in Lavellan’s grip.

“Why,” the man demands, his broad shoulders heaving. " _Why?_ All of this,” he gestures to Skyhold, “I have outsmarted your men, your spies, I have slipped through all your defenses, and you will not accept me! If I am not good enough for you, than kill me! Deny me one final time!” 

He sweeps his arms in broad gestures as he yells, expressing his frustration in every way he can. Lavellan stands there shivering in the snow, one arm wrapped around his aching chest, and says nothing. 

“Give me the knife,” Elorn demands, holding out his hand and taking a step forward. An arrow sinks into the snow several inches in front of him and he stops short, pulling a barrier back up. He forces himself to breathe, visibly swallowing his rage, and glares at Lavellan. “You said it yourself. I have no hold, no people, they have denied me! Turned me away! And now you--!” 

Lavellan’s lip curls into a snarl, a flash of teeth as threatening as a cornered animal. “For fuck’s sake, I did not put you on this mountain!” 

“No! You tempted me here with _that!_ ” Elorn jabs an accusatory finger toward the knife in Lavellan’s hand. “I will not live without a hold, I will not live without a purpose! And if you will not be that purpose, than I will not live!” 

“Enough!” Lavellan’s voice is loud, sharp, and startling. He is, at once, done with this. “You want judgement? You want me to decide your fate? So be it.” 

He lifts his arm, hand fisted tight around the hilt of the knife. The runes that Dagna had etched into it brighten into a glow of magic. A portable, practical foci, Dagna had explained. _Think of it as a tiny staff_. 

Lavellan casts. A burst of green spiritual energy surges toward Elorn, blowing him off his feet and into the snow a foot or two away. Unconscious. 

There is a pause, as he breathes. A wave of nausea and dizziness momentarily overwhelm him, and he stands there in the cold evening wind, breathing against it. When it passes, Lavellan turns and cranes his neck up at the witnessing soldiers. None of them speak. The taut arrows all lower. 

“Well,” he calls up, stumbling a little and just barely managing to replant his feet before falling. “Anyone have a rope ladder?” 

-

The great hall has been cleared of all debris from the collapsing pulley and resulting brawl. Hearths and braziers burn steadily, and the usual low murmur of voices echoing among tapestries and sculptures has returned. 

Lavellan sits at one of the long tables, pouring over Leliana’s conclusive report. Colorful patterns of light blanket the floor where the sun falls through stained glass behind the throne to his left. He scratches a few more notes onto some scrap parchment and lifts his mug of ale. 

Everything feels set back to rights, except for the buzz of anticipatory tension in the air. It has been nearly three weeks since the frozen soldier in the dungeons, the tournament in the courtyard, the intruder in his chambers. He is sore, and stiff, and tired. The delay for this trial has given him a chance to recover from the mana overdose he had experienced when Elorn’s staff exploded. He isn’t sure if the nervous energy buzzing in his chest is a holdover from that recovery, or just anxiety. 

Dorian takes a seat next to him, sitting sideways on the bench so that his full attention is turned to his lover. “My dear, you’re drinking more than I do. Perhaps some bread, instead.” 

Lavellan cuts him a sideways look. “They’re not going to be happy about it,” he says quietly. 

Dorian raises an eyebrow. “Well, we can hardly blame them for that. I wasn’t keen on it at first either. But…” He pauses, glancing at Lavellan’s notes. “I believe you’re right. Maker knows how uncomfortably familiar your explanation was.” 

Lavellan sets down his drink and quill and pivots on the bench to face Dorian. He takes his hands, hidden beneath the ledge of the table, and gives them a squeeze. “Ar lath ma, vhenan,” he whispers.

Dorian squeezes back. “Festis bel umo canavarum.” 

Lavellan grins, though he tries to squash it, which makes it appear that much more genuine. 

When Josephine steps forward into the multicolored sunlight, Lavellan takes a deep breath. It’s time. Before he can rise, Dorian leans forward and places a kiss on his forehead, something reassuring and brief, meant only for Lavellan and not the eyes of everyone who are about to turn their attention toward him. 

As he approaches the throne, he can feel attention drawing toward him. By the time he reaches the top step, all eyes in the great hall are on his back. Everyone gathered knows what is occurring today. 

Lavellan takes a seat and breathes into it. He has never truly been comfortable sitting here. It’s never felt like his. But for today--for this--he’ll appear authoritarian if it kills him. Cullen and Cassandra take a place on either side of him, armed and ready, a silent reminder of the support Lavellan has. 

The hall is crowded. People approach and stand in a semi-circle at the foot of the steps in anticipation, a gap left in the center as a makeshift aisle. The sounds of chains clink near the door--Leliana’s people must have already fetched Elorn from the dungeons. 

The man walks in a daze, flanked by armed guards on all sides. People in the audience turn toward him, scornful and angry, curious, desperate for a glimpse. Elorn does not look at Lavellan as he is marched before him. Not when the guards part, or when Josephine announces him. He does not acknowledge Josephine’s request for a self-defense. He says nothing--no one does. Only in the emptiness that follows does he lift his eyes and look at the Inquisitor.

Lavellan looks back, and lets the silence fill the room. No one says anything--no murmurs, no whispers. This is the man who stole the Inquisitor away in the Basin, tried to sacrifice him to their Hakkonite god. And now he has invaded their keep, killed a soldier, and attacked the Herald of Andraste again. Lavellan can sense their call for blood even if he hadn’t heard it over these last three weeks. A palpable desire for resolution. The Inquisitor had already given this man mercy, given him a second chance. Their charity, by extension, is already exhausted. 

Lavellan steels himself. Below him, a heartbroken man stands quiet and waiting, not offering up any kind of defense. Elorn has sat in a cold cell in the same dungeon he’d murdered that soldier in, waiting for this condemnation. Waiting for Lavellan’s blade to release him.

“You,” Lavellan begins, voice steady and even, quiet enough that those in attendance must fall even more silent to hear, “have lost everything. Your hold, your people, your territory. You blame me. You came here hoping that I would put you out of your misery.” 

Elorn says nothing. His face, as always, is impossible to read. By the set of his shoulders, Lavellan sees nothing but defeat. 

He can feel his companions all watching, waiting. Their judgement, more than anyone else’s, will have to be negotiated with after the fact, follow-up conversations with the companions he knows will disapprove. But he has learned long ago that approval is not worth compromising his own morals. 

“I will do no such thing.” 

He expects murmurs then, ranging from confused to disapproving, but the room remains quiet except for the soft sound of Cullen’s armor shifting. Elorn is the only real point of motion, and even that is subtle--he stands upright, shoulders pulling back. It is not what he expected--not what he wanted.

“Your death doesn’t satisfy anything. The Conclave, the breach, and everything that has followed--it has displaced thousands of people. It has torn them from the course of their lives, from their homes, from the fates they thought they had. You are not special for experiencing the same kind of displacement. You do not get to give up just because things are not as you thought they’d be.” 

His voice is louder now, carrying over the crowd. He wants them to hear this too--it is for all of them, for their anger, their exhaustion, their uncertainty headed into this new post-Breach era.

“You want purpose? You will have it. I sentence you to travel to the north, to the Tevinter border. You will join Movran the Under’s hold and find purpose serving the Inquisition there. You are banished from the south, Elorn of Hakkon’s Hold.”

Elorn stares at him. Processing. His expression begins to darken. “That solves nothing,” he says, and a small amount of frost begins to form on the fur that covers his shoulders. Lavellan does not give him the chance to arrive at his outburst. 

“You do not get to forfeit your life at the expense of others just because you are too cowardly to live it.” 

“I am not a coward,” Elorn bites back, pitch rising. Several guards move to intercept him should he move from where he stands. 

“Then prove it,” Lavellan says, so suddenly and powerfully that Elorn goes still. “You have run from everything in pursuit of something you don’t even understand. If you will not make use of your life, than the Inquisition will.” 

At the far end of the great hall, two solid knocks ring out from the other side of the huge doors. Soldiers step forward, clutch the handles, and haul it open. All eyes, including Elorns, turn to see what the doorway reveals.

Backlit by sunlight, a mountain of a man with huge ram’s horns affixed to the hood of his armor steps into the hall.

“Movran the Under,” Lavellan introduces. “See this man to your hold, alive and in one relative piece, and make use of him.”

The giant avaar chief saunters through the crowd, totally at ease under their scrutiny. He has spent the last several weeks travelling here for this moment, at the summons of the young man sitting on the throne before him. He stands next to Elorn, not bothering to acknowledge him. He dips his head at Lavellan, the grin on his face deeply amused. “It’d be my pleasure.” 

There are whispers among the crowd, in a tone that isn’t as angry as Lavellan had expected. He looks one last time down at Elorn. 

“I will not see you again,” Lavellan says, with an unquestionable finality. “This is the last knife I will give you.”

Elorn opens his mouth to speak, to protest, to argue, but no sound comes out. Movran does not give him the chance to find his voice. He grips Elorn’s elbow and pulls him, shackled wrists and all, toward the door of the great hall. The guards follow, an escort that will ghost them in various stages all the way to the border. 

Lavellan watches them go. Halfway to the door, Elorn looks over his shoulder one last time, and Lavellan lifts his chin, one final acknowledgement. 

To his left, Cassandra leans in. “Is this wise,” she asks. 

To his right, Cullen grips at the hilt of his sword. “I should think not.” 

Lavellan looks to Dorian, standing near the table that he had been preparing his notes at. The man is regarding him with a smile. Subtle, genuine, and radiating love. Lavellan returns it. 

“He will not come back,” Lavellan says, his tone simple with confidence. He settles back into the throne. “It is done.”

**Author's Note:**

> This might not be the most slow-build thing I've ever written but it sure as hell feels like it. Took me a few months of picking at it to get to the end, so I'll miss her and be grateful she's over with in equal measure. 
> 
> To clarify about Elorn's fate: he was, initially, meant to die in some dramatic kidnapping attempt that was far too self-indulgent and not realistic/practical in any way. And then, upon re-reading Exposure, I realized the intention around his character was largely based on internalized homophobia, and what kind of a shitty message would it be if he died off as a resolution? Bury your gays my ass. So I readjusted quite a bit of the second half of this sequel, and did my best to give him a plausible start at finding himself and his purpose. Whether this actually happened, I have no idea. But it's better than the alternative. 
> 
> Anyway, if you've enjoyed this fic, please let me know with a kudo or comment! This is an incredibly fun world to play in and an incredibly dead fandom space right now, so if y'all're out there, smash that motherfuckin like button and let me know. If you a freak who likes hurt/comfort, that's my forte, my dude. Give me an excuse to post more of it!


End file.
